With its depiction of poverty, desperation, duplicity and organized corruption, "Blind
Shaft" is hardly a good advertisement for Asia's long-ballyhooed Workers' Paradise.
It's something more valuable: a gripping, incendiary mix of human drama, social
commentary and B-movie grit from, of all places, Communist China. As this overpopulated
country incorporates elements of a free-market economy, citizens who relied on
the caretaker government are scrambling for sustenance. And all rules are off.
In "Blind Shaft," Song (Yi Xiang Li) and Tang (Shuangbao Wang), two amoral coal
miners, travel to illegal mining sites to find a patsy and perpetrate a risky,
morbid scam calculated to earn them considerable sums of money via extortion.
Because they need to keep the authorities at bay, the underhanded characters
that run the mines are perfect targets for a swindle. In the tradition of film
noir, writer/director Yang Li suggests that the greed and violence that rule
the lives of Song and Tang may be their undoing. The settings  desolate
mining camps with treacherous caves prone to collapsing, filthy bunkers where
the miners dwell, crowded urban areas with unsavory types roaming the streets  are
dark and depressing, which lends to the overall sense of malaise. Grime aside, "Blind
Shaft" is a sharp, taut piece of hyperrealism.